YouTube brings pop-up space to India to focus on local language video creators

The YouTube pop-up space available will act as a hub for video creators, offering everything from training to hands-on workshops to networking with other creatorsVikas SN | ETtech | October 05, 2017, 23:54 IST

YouTube is looking to tap into the growing community of local language video creators in India with the launch of its first pop-up space in the country.

The pop-up space available for three days from Thursday, will act as a hub for video creators, offering everything from training to hands-on workshops to networking with other members of the YouTube community and industry veterans.

Setup at Ramoji Film City in Hyderabad, the space will also allow video creators to produce high-quality content with access to professional equipment.

This launch comes as viewership of regional content on YouTube platform has tripled over the past two years.

"We have been very focused on the Hindi audience and Hindi creators over the last couple of years with Mumbai as the hub. This is the first opportunity where we are experimenting what creating content is like for YouTube creators in another language and culture in India" said David MacDonald, Head of YouTube Spaces for Asia-Pacific.

MacDonald said over 700 creators are expected to come over to the pop-up space in the next three days, with a vast majority of them being Telugu speakers and video creators. "In Hyderabad, a lot of focus is on food due to the strong food video creator base in the city"

"What's unique to India is there are so many languages and cultures together and it's the largest scale we see anywhere else" said Lance Podell, global head of YouTube Spaces "With the pop-up spaces format, we are bringing the benefits of YouTube Space to creators in emerging talent hubs like Hyderabad"

"In Hyderabad, we are doing the exact same things we do in YouTube Spaces in Mumbai or New York or Los Angeles, but in a packed three-day engagement. Creators in Hyderabad will get an experience what YouTube spaces are like and we get a sense what video creators are like in Hyderabad." said MacDonald.

While the Hyderabad space is the first in the country, YouTube has held similar pop-up spaces in cities like Jakarta, Seoul, Bangkok, Manila, Miami and Mexico City among others.

MacDonald said they are going to learn from the feedback they receive from this pop-up space, understand the needs of the local creator community and experiment with the format in future rollouts in the country.

YouTube had setup its first permanent creator studio in Mumbai in December 2015. Since then, over 7500 creators have visited the Mumbai studio and produced over 500 videos with free of cost access, Podell said. He added that over 50 independent creators in India have hit the 1 million subscriber mark and over 500 creators has crossed the 100k subscriber mark in the past 10-12 months.

In the Mumbai studio, the company's workshops have been one of its most popular offerings among video creators, said YouTube Space India head Jigisha Mistry "This is because creators are used to working with one camera setups and more often, they are the only person shooting and editing the video. So they have a limited understanding."

Podell also noted that different creators face different challenges and they have tried addressing almost all of them through its studio spaces. This may include training on effectively using lighting in videos, helping in script writing or working in a larger setup in collaboration with other creators

"As creators get more successful and start to generate a large subscriber base or generate revenue, they also get more interested in bigger challenges like experimenting with a complex shoot or exploring a story idea that they couldn't do it by themselves" Podell said.